Ladybird, Ladybird
by Moonphase
Summary: Hereditary fanfiction. Post-film. Annie's soul waits outside of her house. Where are her children?


Was there even a heaven? Or was she stuck here because she wasn't going to be able to move on?

Annie stood in the back garden. About a foot away lays Max, their dog.

It's cold but she isn't shivering. It's not the sort of cold from a cold night, but deeper than that. It's the cold of death. No one needs to explain that to her, she just knows.

She found herself in the garden shortly before That Thing succeeded in cutting off her head. She had known she was possessed, but she didn't know the entity inside her. It hadn't spoken to her. She hadn't seen any visions. They hadn't shared a consciousness. Instead she had experienced becoming a puppet for something bigger and smarter and scarier than herself. It didn't communicate either because it was too foreign to her humanity and simply didn't _think_ the way people did, or because it was too above her to find her worthy of any sort of consideration; she was just a tool.

Annie watched her son lying face down in the dirt. She couldn't even cry. The misery of knowing she had failed as a mother so utterly had taken to her to a place so sad and dark she couldn't even truly express it. Instead, like Charlie, she stood blank faced as her headless corpse floated almost cartoonishly out of the attic's smashed window. Peter was still alive. He had to be. The fall wasn't so great, but it had inflicted heavy damage. She would probably die painfully after a few hours; broken bones screaming, lungs filling with blood. She would wait for his soul to appear before her, they would find Steve and together they would… well… they would think of something. She needed to apologise. She needed to hold her son tight and tell him that the nightmare was finally over.

A light shone over the boy, sinking deep into him. She tightened her fists. _No_.

Peter… or the body once known as Peter, stood. It paid no attention to her, but watched her body enter the treehouse before slowly trailing after it.

"No," she whispered. Peter had to still be in there.

The boy clucked, once, like Charlie had. It was like a gunshot to the chest. The tears came now. God, why didn't the agony stop? How many times did she have to be punished?

She knew the this… Demon… wanted her son. She knew it wanted to possess him. And on some level she had worked out, during her terrified but determined march to June's and then her growing terror of Charlie's notebook, that Charlie had been possessed for a long time.

But she had presumed. Hoped. That Charlie was still Charlie. That she had still been her strange and quiet little girl. That her oddness was the fault of her grandmother and her obsessions simply a sign of being on the autism spectrum. But to hear that click was to associate what had been Charlie's to simply being the Demon.

So had Charlie ever really existed?

If she had, had she been trapped, like Annie had, screaming in an empty space but completely out of control?

Or was she so interwoven with the Demon that she and he could not be separated?

The latter two, whilst horrible, were somewhat comforting. It meant there was still a soul to save. It meant that there was a little girl somewhere. But the former, the idea that Charlie's soul had been burned or eaten away before it had truly begun and that they had known and loved a demon all along was terrifying.

Annie looked over to the treehouse, listening to those geriatric fucks chanting. Tears flowed down her face. Was that why she wasn't in heaven? Why god had not intervened on their behalf? No angels of protection sent? Because they had harboured and loved a demon?

She turned from the treehouse and walked towards Max. Or some approximation of walking, it felt more like she was drifting.

They had bought Max six years ago. Steve had insisted, excited like a child on Christmas morning when bringing the dog home. Annie had feigned the best she could but she remembered that at the time all she wanted was to return to her studio because there was a deadline coming up on a new piece for an architect that she didn't want missed. Charlie had been standing in the doorway of the living room, chomping into chocolate and staring at Max silently. Peter had been further away from the rest of them, texting on his phone. He looked up, had given his dad a small perfunctory smile that he had probably learned from Annie before wandering out into the hallway and back to his room. Charlie left shortly afterwards to return to her treehouse.

At the time she had been annoyed that she was the one who had to stand around pretending to be excited when her kids couldn't be bothered. And Peter had annoyed her the most because he was always so bored by everything; Charlie was, well, Charlie, so her lack of interest was understandable.

She had complained to Steve about it, who had just sat there playing with Max.

She now knew how upset he must have been. That getting Max was a desperate attempt to unify their family. They should have worked; they were well off, articulate, creative, lived in a nice area. But they were so dysfunctional. He thought that getting a dog would round off the family, given them something to love. But it didn't work. She and her children were too remote. Locked into themselves.

He must have been lonely.

Annie looked around, wondering where his spirit was. Had he left, perhaps with Max? She wouldn't blame him.

Suddenly, there was screaming from the treehouse. She turned and stared. Many screams. Those of people being betrayed and slaughtered.

The light from the treehouse seemed to deepen from gold to vermillion to red.

The screaming stopped.

The thing that had once been her son climbed down from the treehouse just as it began to burn. Hearing crackling to her left, she turned to see the house setting alight also.

Burning the evidence. Funny, that a demon thought to do that.

He walked towards her slowly. A crown made of human skin sat atop his dark curls. The light reflected in his deep brown eyes. Annie had gotten used to her son's face, and so often it had been sneering or sarcastic or doped out that she had ceased to notice that he was striking. Not traditionally handsome in a typical Americana way, but regally good-looking in an old-fashioned way. He looked nothing like the rest of the family, who had been more pale and fair with straighter, coarser hair and light eyes.

She frowned as he walked, straight backed and unseeing, in her direction. He wasn't looking at her and she knew he would continue to ignore her, passing her by and going to where-ever the hell he was off to.

"My son!" She shouted, "my daughter! Where are they?"

The demon-as-Peter stopped. He blinked and slowly turned to her; first his eyes, then his head.

He clicked his tongue.

"Where are my children?" she whispered, her voice hoarse. Pain and suffering and her death had made her bold but looking into her son's eyes and knowing something ancient and incomprehensible was inside them still frightened her enough.

As dark eyes stared into her own, she found her resolve crumbling.

"Please," she croaked, "please, just return them to me."

**I do not concern myself with the souls of humans**.

The voice sound low and soft, like that of many whispers merged together. A shadow of a sound that reverberated. Peter's mouth stayed closed and his face impassive. The voice was everywhere but came from nowhere.

"P-Peter," she was ashamed of her stammering, "is he still in you?"

A flicker of emotion then. Paimon, for she had to accept his name now, looked slightly down and to the left before slowly drawing his attention back to her.

**A little. But soon what is left of his soul will go to its owner.**

She frowned.

**The Angel of Light. My own King. Lucifer.**

"No, no, no, no," the tears fell anew, "please, it's not fair. Is there no heaven? He deserves heaven."

A familiar gleam in the eye then. Paimon, though not obviously changing his expression held something of Peter then. That smug look she hated. The one that said, 'you're an idiot mom.'

"There isn't a heaven?"

**May as well not be. Your children are gone. Your home has burned down. It is all ashes.**

"Is Charlie in Hell also?"

He blinked slowly. He was losing what little interest he had in her. Humans were boring and predictable.

And she understood.

There was no Charlie.

But, as Paimon walked away at a leisurely pace, free to reign destruction and to create a new, younger and more competent clan Annie knew that her soul would wander the Earth until Judgement Day.

She would spend eternity fruitlessly searching for her children.


End file.
